Pearl Duncan is completing two books, tentatively titled, “DNA Adventure, Rebels’ Birthright Reclaimed,” and “A Pirate Ship of Old New York: Colonial Slavery, The Founding Fathers and a Remarkable 9/11 Discovery.”Now that it is announced by the producers of Downton Abbey that Gary Carr, the star of the BBC’s Death in Paradise, a mystery set on a Caribbean island, will join the show as an attractive, charming and charismatic jazz musician, some viewers who love the popular British television show set in the 1920s, flushed with Edwardian style, fashion and upstairs downstairs shenanigans, ask if the show will continue to be historically accurate. Why do they ask? They ask because the jazz musician being added to a show about British aristocrats and their servants is black.

Downton Abbey filming near Inverary Castle last summer. Source: Argyll News.Inverary Castle, the location for last week’s season finale of Downton Abbey (I promise, there are no spoilers in this essay!), is a gothic mansion that harbors many a tale, beyond those dreamed up by Julian Fellowes’ period drama set in post-Edwardian England. An hour’s drive from Glasgow, Inverary is the ancestral home of the Dukes of Argyll, who made their reputation through loyalty to the King of England.

With the American premier of Downton Abbey, season three, here are five history lessons based on the popular television series provided by Katherine Howe, author and lecturer of American studies at Cornell University. The paperback of Howe’s novel, “The House of Velvet and Glass,” takes place in the same time period and will be released on Jan. 29 by Hyperion/Voice.The real women behind Cora, Countess of Grantham and her mother, Martha Levinson